So, the town just draws in people with secrets/darkness in their hearts, puts them thru their therapy, but knows in advance who will succumb to fantasy over reality? I'm not following.

Here' s the way I see it :The town has no volition of it' s own, it' s merely a mirror which reflects people' s inner psyche. James has some mitigating circumstances (that' s what HE thinks anyway). He doesn' t wish punishment, he wishes atonement. The cell bars, PH, Maria, they' re all born from that wish. Eddie seems more focused on vengeance, while Angela seems to look for punishment. She walks through a burning staircase without dying. I think Angela is here to suffer, she thinks even death wouldn' t be hard enough a punishment.

"Mama! Mama, I was looking for you. ... Now youâ€™re the only one left. Maybe then.... Maybe then I can rest.""Tank you for saving me but ... I wish you hadn' t. Even Mama said it. I deserve what happened."Angela wishes to be forgiven, but at the same time she thinks no one will deem her worthy of forgiveness. James does, maybe she does, but none of that matters, absolution has to come from one member of her family. Since the town reflects her inner psyche she' ll never get it. If she has stalkers then I imagine she sees them as unforgiving family members (some also being abusive/rapist).

As for Eddie he' s only looking for vengeance. He ' s stalked by inoffensive laughing figures lining up for being shot. James wasn' t someone materialized by the town, sooo ... not that inoffensive ! ^^

^First and Foremost, I wanna apologize for my poor wording. And then....Eddie felt justified by what he did. He totally was more focused on vengeance. Give you that one.

Angela was looking for the truth, just like James. I'm guessing somewhere underneath all that crazy, she knew a lot of her family was dead (was the mom? I don't remember.) Well, her father certainly was. I'm saying, what was different about Angela's "case"? Granted, she had more years of emotional bullshit to deal with, but it's still murder. All three of them were dealing with murder, it's just that Eddie was too far gone, succumbed to the crazy, and James had to kill him in self defense.

I'm not arguing that Angela and (especially) Eddie were a lot worse off mentally than James was, but who's to say that they wouldn't have the same chance of redemption that James had? I don't know what the fuck happened to Angela, but Eddie died because James had to defend himself. There may have been hope for him eventually, if he would've dealt with things head-on.

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What' s different is that she was an abused child. Abused children often think they deserve what happened to them, which is why most of them don' t ask for help.Remember "A mother is god in a child' s eye" ?"Even Mama said it. I deserve what happened" ergo whether Angela thinks she deserves it or not is irrelevant. Creepy, huh ?

But now Eddie is bothering me.Maybe he was just as bad off as Angela? We didn't get as many specifics with Eddie, so perhaps he really was the level of psycho that would've led to him being a serial murderer.

I've now got many things to ponder...

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IMO Eddie is Angela' s opposite. He thinks he never deserved any of the crap that happened to him. He doesn' t have a wish for any stalker since he thinks everyone' s guilty but him. He wishes to BE the stalker.Angela' s the Yin, Eddie' s the Yang, and James is right in the middle, it' s up to the player to make his mind pick his side.

Maria : still right in the middle.In Water : Yin.Leave : Healthy Yang.Rebirth : ????

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SilentWren wrote:

alone in the town wrote:

Considering what I believe Pyramid Head really represents, perhaps their lack of a suitable equivalent indicates that they were doomed to never come to terms with what they had done.

I need clarification on this.

You're saying that Angela and Eddie had the same trial as James, but not the same choice-(understanding/fortification-or-madness/death)

So, the town just draws in people with secrets/darkness in their hearts, puts them thru their therapy, but knows in advance who will succumb to fantasy over reality? I'm not following.

No, Their trials are different from James'. James' trial is to realize the truth first, and then come to grips with it. Angela and Eddie, at the time we first see them already know what they've done, whether they had to recover that information or whether they never forgot, they know. For James, he has to realize what he did, and why he did it and then decide how to react. Angela wants to find her "mama" and probably does at the top of the stairs. There, she will probably have a choice of life, or death, killing or mercy. Eddie succumbed to his torment, and eventually started to just accept it as truth: People WILL mock him, and the only way to deal with it is to destroy them. When he encounters James for the final time, he's convinced James is mocking him too, and they have a shoot out where Eddie eats more lead than a Sherman Tank before he keels over. Eddie's trial is set up on how to deal with the way people treat him. Angela's involves forgiveness between her and her mother. At least, that's what I took away from it all.

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Angela's involves forgiveness between her and her mother.- not forgiveness. Angela says she agrees with what her mama said: that she deserved what happened to her ( what happened to angela i mean).Angela never expresses any forgiveness toward her mother.

Angela's involves forgiveness between her and her mother.- not forgiveness. Angela says she agrees with what her mama said: that she deserved what happened to her ( what happened to angela i mean).Angela never expresses any forgiveness toward her mother.

I think it would involved forgiveness towards not only her mother, but her father and possibly brother as well. And of course admitting to herself that she didn't deserve what happened. No-one deserves to be abused by a parent.

Right. Forgiveness should involve her mother for shure. She wouldn't feel so guilty if she didn't accuse her of beeing guilty.. "she got what she deserved"- that's why she also sees herself as a seductress ---> the plate from the prison. I'm not sure if the place you find it is symbolic ---> the shower room (maybe to clean off the filth because of her father's abuse.)

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SilentWren wrote:

I need clarification on this.

You're saying that Angela and Eddie had the same trial as James, but not the same choice-(understanding/fortification-or-madness/death)

So, the town just draws in people with secrets/darkness in their hearts, puts them thru their therapy, but knows in advance who will succumb to fantasy over reality? I'm not following.

Not that.

They all had a chance to redeem whatever they believed needed redeeming, and that James is the only one who took a real step in that direction (as opposed to Angela and Eddie merely succumbing to their respective issues). Pyramid Head may represent James' desire to actually come to terms with everything, and this includes, in large part, making him deny the fictional series of events he fabricated in his mind. Pyramid Head's first appearance is very soon after James encounters the first real evidence of Mary's presence in town (that being, the apartment with the mannequin).

I believe that Pyramid Head is James' Emergency Mental Survival Kit, and it could be that its manifestation is a sign that at least a part of James seeks to discard the fantasy and come to grips with reality. That Angela and Eddie lack a creature of this caliber would, therefore, imply that neither really wishes to accomplish this. Note that this does not mean events are pre-ordained: Pyramid Head does not appear until after James has been around town for quite some time.

^Eddie mentions in his opening cut scene that he saw some "weird looking monsters" in the apartment complex, but he doesn't seem that afraid for the rest of the game. He's not really that worried about Laura either, but then again....he's a killer.

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^Eddie mentions in his opening cut scene that he saw some "weird looking monsters" in the apartment complex, but he doesn't seem that afraid for the rest of the game. He's not really that worried about Laura either, but then again....he's a killer.

The only one Eddie killed before arriving in Silent Hill was a dog, so I wouldn't exactly call him a killer. He felt bad enough about what he did to run away.I think the only reason he wasn't too concerned with the monsters later on is because he started to enjoy killing/harming them. He was pretty quick to attack James simply because he said one little thing wrong. As for why he's not concerned about Laura...wouldn't have a clue. Apparently her otherworld was devoid of monsters, but Eddie wouldn't know that...would he?

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Soulless-Shadow wrote:

The only one Eddie killed before arriving in Silent Hill was a dog, so I wouldn't exactly call him a killer. He felt bad enough about what he did to run away.

... and after shooting someone in the knee. Somehow I think that is the real reason he ran. Shooting a dog isn't going to get you in as much trouble as shooting another human.

Soulless-Shadow wrote:

As for why he's not concerned about Laura...wouldn't have a clue. Apparently her otherworld was devoid of monsters, but Eddie wouldn't know that...would he?

James didn't but I think Eddie did, or at least suspected. James just assumed that she was somehow able to avoid them, the fact that he is so shocked that she hadn't been hurt proves that. He even asks Eddie "This town is full of monsters! How can you sit there and eat pizza?" to which Eddie simply responds "She said she was fine on her own." No matter how self-centered you are, you are not going to let a little girl go running off into a monstrous hell. That is why James peruses her, as well as the fact that she knows something about Mary, or he thinks she knows something about Mary he doesn't. Eddie probably knows that Laura doesn't see or experience the monsters the same way he and James do.

Also unlike James and Angela, Eddie is aware of the nature of the town and why he is there. He knows the town called him for a reason. I think he and Laura are starkly different from Angela and James in that way.

She's basically forced to walk up the stair case and "admire" her work, you know, it's basically forcing her to own up.

I enjoy subconscious puns. Just sayin'.

alone in the town wrote:

It's not just about James. We are given exclusive access to his story. It doesn't mean the others are less important.

If one considers Maria as a part of the equation, then my answer is yes. Daddy and the Laughing People are Angela's and Eddie's equivalent of James' Maria. I do not believe they have their own unstoppable Pyramid Head-like monsters, however. Considering what I believe Pyramid Head really represents, perhaps their lack of a suitable equivalent indicates that they were doomed to never come to terms with what they had done.

I like this.

James does ultimately have the option to become mentally healthy in the end- he manages to beat his punitive super-ego (AKA Pyramid Head). Angela still embraces her PSE at the end, ("I deserve this") which is why I believe she's her own "punisher." At least while we get to see her. Who knows? She may find the will to become healthy at the top of those stairs, or she may just sit down and let the fire consume her. She's ultimately her own worst enemy, in that what she did, she did to protect herself. Her guilt prevents her from accepting her own drive to survive as healthy, so she punishes herself. ...In re-reading that sentence, I'm thinking it's pretty unlikely she'd get healthy, and probably kills herself.

James, on the other hand, is in such deep denial of his part in Mary's death, you could argue that PH is sort of his visualization of the "damned disease" that killed her- and just happened to also be him. As such, it's really fitting that he has some "physical" being following him around trying to punish him, since it's the way he perceives what he's done to begin with: it wasn't me, it was someone else. But at the same time, somewhere in him he knew what he'd done, and he wanted to atone for it.

As for Eddie, he was weak. He had the chance, like all of them, to face his PSE and get some self-esteem. Based on his "crimes" as we know them, they weren't really super devastating sins: he maimed a guy, and while killing the dog was bad, like Harrys said, it's not killing your wife or family. All he needed was to get some self-esteem and atone for that, and he'd be healthy. Instead, he got defensive and buried himself in his defenses. Once a patient has entrenched themselves in their defenses that deeply, it's unlikely they'll come out again. Not to the same therapist or confronter, anyway. In SH, the confronter was the whole fucking town. So, naturally, the healthy part was smothered by the defenses and got broke. James became the necessary euthanizing method at that point, and it just helped him in his own course towards recognizing what he'd done to bring him there. In other words, having to kill Eddie was more a happy coincidence than a set role of "Eddie's Punisher."

...Sorry, long. I've been transcribing patient sessions all day and it just put me in that sort of "gung-ho PsyD" mood.

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